[ARCHIVED] Looking for suggestions: Granting extra time in a course for which the term has closed

[naz12]

Hello,

I have a situation that has been exacerbated by the current state of things. Each time we reach the end of a term we typically have one or two students who need additional time to complete course work due to a medical illness or some other reasonable accommodation request. The pandemic has increased the volume of these requests exponentially.

What I was doing was moving that single student to a new section in the same course and assigning them to a newly created term which would then end on the agreed-upon accommodation date. This works but requires creating individual terms and sections for the student and then using sticky changes (to override our nightly SIS import) to modify the student's course section. The only thing that this was breaking was our grade sync with our SIS because the section key was different the sync was no longer able to see the information.

I'm looking for a better solution; I'd really like if I could go into the course, find the student and extend their enrollment but that isn't possible so I figured I'd post this out there and see if anyone has other ideas that might result in less manual manipulation.

[gnoack]

At our institution, we do the same as far as creating a new section for students who have incomplete grades, but we don't have to create a new term for them.  Instead, we use the course end date settings to extend the course's availability. This overrides any term dates set at the admin level. 

We manually create the sections in the course, so our SIS updates don't effect the enrollment.  The student is enrolled in two sections at the same time. 

[chriscas]

We do the same here, although just a minor correction to your statement...  It's the date settings (plus the corresponding override checkbox) of that new section, not the course, that we modify and are not overridden by any SIS imports.

-Chris

[naz12]

Why did I think that adjusting the course end date would re-open the course for all students in the class, thus making the course card re-appear on everyone's dashboard? We were using the individual term to adjust it so that it only opens back up for the student(s) affected by the change.

[chriscas]

Hi @naz12 

Adjusting the course date(s) would make those changes for all students if the override box is checked.  Even adjusting the term of the course would affect all students, so I'm a bit confused on how you're accomplishing what you're describing, or if things are actually working differently than you think..  You'd ideally leave all the course-level settings as they were, but adjust the settings of the newly added section (where you would add the student and teacher) instead.  Does that make sense?  I can provide some screenshots from one of our courses if it might help.

-Chris

[naz12]

If you don't change the term then the teacher cannot re-assign the due dates for assignments. Modifying due dates was necessary to allow teachers to help students manage deadlines and also affected the late grading policies.

This may have changed since we started this practice ~3 yrs ago but without changing the terms the assignments showed up as late submissions and then the late policies were applied.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @naz12 ,

When you edit section dates and enable the override checkbox, the dates for that section override the term dates.  There are a few important considerations when doing this though.  First, the student and teacher should be added to this new section.  Second, the teacher will have to edit the assignment settings, assigning separate due dates for the new section vs the rest of the class.  I think this is where you might have had some difficulty.  You are correct that if the assign to setting is "everyone" then the term dates would still apply.  It's crucial that the new section has a separate assign to box with the new adjusted sue dates (that fall within the extended section dates), and then the everyone else area retains the original due dates.  I think your current process may be inadvertently allowing all students to access the course, resubmit assignments, and probably most importantly might be flooding them with irrelevant notifications about changes not intended for them.  Again, I can provide some sample screenshots illustrating this if it would help you.

-Chris

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @naz12 ...

Here is what we do:

1. Click on course "Settings".
2. Click on the "Sections" tab.
3. Add a new section called "Extension".
4. Click on that new "Extension" section, and then click on the "Edit Section" button.
5. Set the start/end dates and times for that student.
6. Click the checkbox for "Students can only participate in the course between these dates", and then click on "Update Section".
7. Go to the "People" page.
8. For the student in question, click on the three dots on the far right side of the student's row.  Select "Edit Sections".
9. "browse" for the "Extension" section you just created, and then click "Update".
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for the instructor(s), too.

Hope this helps a bit.

[gcollins1]

This is so elegant! I've been telling my faculty to just extend the whole course for all students! Thank you!